The Wannado Curriculum: A Math Teacher’S Journey to the Dynamic Math 2.0 Classroom

By Ihor Charischak

The dynamic classroom is a place where the interaction between teacher and students produces engagement and learning. Success depends on what the teacher does, how it fits in with the needs of the students, and the quality and utilization of resources. In The Wannado Curriculum, author Ihor Charischak tells how he turned his vision of a dynamic Math 2.0 classroom into a reality.

Part memoir, part teaching tool, The Wannado Curriculum offers insight into helping teachers establish a context for creating their own wannado curriculum, a project-based approach where the context makes the content interesting to students. Charischak:

Describes how growing up as an immigrant in America impacted his learning Tells how he discovered the secret to working with unmotivated students Explores the idea that alternative ways of teaching and learning are the keys to powerful, dynamic teaching and learning that motivates students Discusses his experiences in a private, child-centered school, where he used computers to practice the teaching and learning he was excited about Relays how the real-life game of craps inspired a reluctant student to ask questions about the mathematical intricacies of the game Brings to life his experiences with computers in teaching math Details his vision of the dynamic math classroom Introduces Math 2.0, a powerful environment that uses mathematics software and collaborative Web 2.0 tools in a dynamic classroom setting

The Wannado Curriculum presents glimpses of what twenty-first century math teaching and learning could look like if a student-driven and teacher-supported method was universally embraced.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9781491758151

Ihor Charischak

Ihor Charischak is a career mathematics educator who continues to pursue his passion of firing up teachers’ imaginations about how learning and teaching math with technology can be interesting, useful, and empowering. His ideal course of study is the Wannado Curriculum. Ihor currently resides in White Plains, New York.

Book preview

THE WANNADO CURRICULUM

A MATH TEACHER’S JOURNEY TO THE DYNAMIC MATH 2.0 CLASSROOM

Copyright © 2015 Ihor Charischak.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-5814-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-5815-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015900776

iUniverse rev. date: 02/23/2015

Contents

Chapter 1 In the Beginning

Chapter 2 College Daze

Chapter 3 The Carteret Years

Chapter 4 A Year of Many Changes (1970–71)

Chapter 5 Columbia Prep Days

Chapter 6 Brooklyn Friends School

Chapter 7 Craps to the Rescue at BFS

Chapter 8 On My Own: The Restless Years

Chapter 9 The CIESE Years

Chapter 10 In Search of Math 2.0

Chapter 11 Microworlds and Beyond

Chapter 12 Wannado Adventures

Chapter 13 Conclusions

Introduction

When I imagine young children engaged in learning, the scene is dynamic. The faces of those children are alight with wonder, with puzzlement, with interest, and yes, with joy. When I picture students in many of today’s classrooms, the image is often static. Locked into a prescribed system of learning, the faces of many young people register boredom, disinterest, or resignation.

—Judith Lloyd Yero¹

Have you ever walked into a classroom and immediately felt that good things were happening? Maybe the children were totally engaged in a project or a game, and you sensed in them an I wannado that! attitude. Perhaps you observed a particularly charismatic teacher doing something dramatic to capture the student’s imagination, and as a result, the students were involved in their learning. In any case, there were many factors that contributed to making that class exciting. Wouldn’t it be great if there were a way to bottle those attributes and give them to teachers on the first day of school, so they could have great classes anytime they wished? As far-fetched as this may sound, there is some reality to it. Good teaching (which translates into good learning) is only partly an innate talent. Mostly, it is something that can be learned.

The dynamic classroom is a place where the discourse between teacher and students, in the context of using rich resources, produces engagement and learning. Success depends on what the teacher does, the script or action plan she/he creates, how it fits in with the needs of the students, and the quality and utilization of resources. The implications are that to be successful in their work with children, teachers need to continue to learn and grow.

I stumbled upon the dynamic classroom idea through the twists and turns in my life. This book is a story of that discovery and how I turned my vision of a dynamic Math 2.0 classroom into a reality—sometimes intentionally but mostly serendipitously. The intent of this book is not to offer a recipe book of lesson plans but rather to help you establish a context for creating your own wannado curriculum.

• In chapter 1, I describe growing up as an immigrant in America. I picked up most literacy skills quickly. Math, however, required more of a context for me to start appreciating it. That context turned out to be baseball and a homegrown game we used to play. Inspired by the national sport and an obsession with collecting baseball trading cards, I turned my curiosity about calculating baseball’s earned run averages into my first wannado² math lesson. As a result, I became a more confident math student throughout my elementary, middle, and high school years.

• Chapter 2 explains how a fragile understanding of math rendered me totally unprepared to confront the reality of college-level mathematics and how I came to grips with the problem. I had to learn how to learn.

• In chapter 3, I discover the secret to working with unmotivated students, which is using rich math activities that they really want to do. Highlighted is the Stock Market Game and how it impacted my students to enjoy learning.

• In chapter 4, I discover that motivation is at the heart of learning, regardless of one’s age. Frustrated with uninspiring professors in graduate school, I left and was free to pursue an alternative that would allow me to practice a different model of teaching and learning. The destination was Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School, a private school in Manhattan.

• Chapter 5 explores the idea that alternative ways of teaching and learning are the keys to powerful, dynamic teaching and learning that motivates students. This chapter explores my early private-school teaching days, where I learned about teaching adolescent kids and discovered that I could reinvent mathematics from a teacher’s perspective.

• Chapter 6 finds me in a private, child-centered school, where I used computers to practice the kind of teaching and learning I was excited about. It wasn’t surprising that computers sparked the interest and imagination of the students. This led me to a new adventure: working with teachers and helping them learn about computers.

• Chapter 7 answers the question, What are the chances of winning in the game of craps? Here, I describe how the real-life game of craps inspired a reluctant learner in my class to ask questions about the mathematical intricacies of the game. His questions involved the law of large numbers and led him to develop programming skills. He began to discover math in the real world. It was a true wannado experience.

• Chapter 8 brings to life my experiences with computers in teaching math. Computers now gave me a platform to explore my vision of the dynamic classroom, which was in its infancy at this time. Highlighted are my experiences at Columbia Teachers College, the BOCES Instructional Services Division and Logo Computer Systems Inc., which provided me with the background to develop the dynamic classroom with the use of computers as a model for learning and teaching math.

• Chapter 9 makes explicit my vision of the dynamic math classroom, highlighting its essential components. This became the CIESE/Stevens Institute of Technology model for teacher education, where the goal was to help teachers increase their facility with using technology in these six important areas in the teaching of math:

1. Using and accessing technology in the classroom

2. Creating a technology-oriented classroom environment

3. Individualizing the mathematics that students are learning

4. Using effective pedagogical strategies and student discourse

5. Personalizing the curriculum

6. Implementing various student-centered assessment strategies

• Chapter 10 describes Math 2.0, which is my vision of how powerful math-based software, combined with the use of collaborative Web 2.0 tools in a dynamic classroom, can produce engaging learning experiences for both teachers and students. I also discuss the classroom as part of a larger community. As online technology becomes more sophisticated, the classroom as we know it is expanding to allow for teaching, learning, and collaborating with no physical boundaries. There are many hybrids beyond brick-and-mortar schools: home schooling, virtual academies, open-source videos, and online tutoring services. Applying the power of the web and Math 2.0 tools within an extended community allows for the creation of learning scenarios that can be used in project-based learning.

• Chapter 11 highlights three examples of such scenarios:

1. Playing Fraction Darts

2. Guillermo and the Great Green Globs Challenge

3. The West Challenge

• Chapter 12 suggests that the antidote for student’s motivation malaise is something I call the Wannado Math 2.0 Curriculum, a project-based approach where the context makes the content intrinsically interesting to students. The existing motivation inertia would be supplanted by engaging projects, and the teacher’s role would become more mentor-like, guiding students in their learning of math for the purpose of achieving the larger goal(s) of the project. Three examples are shared:

1. Number Town (where fractions come alive)

2. The Stock Market Challenge

3. Measuring the circumference of the earth

• Chapter 13 offers my conclusions, followed by an afterword.

• The book’s website is at http://dmcpress.org/wannado

Chapter 1

In the Beginning

As a youngster growing up in Pittsburgh, the excitement of taking auto trips was immeasurable. One of my favorite destinations was Lake Erie, where our family vacationed every summer. It was only 115 miles from Pittsburgh, but it took nearly four hours to get there! No superhighways in those days. We lumbered along Route 19, a mostly two-lane road, passing through small towns like Zelienople, which was a favorite of mine. I liked the name and always wanted to go to the Strand Theater (which is still there and thriving). The culmination of what always seemed like an endless ride was a white-sand beach at Presque Isle.

Figure1-1.jpg

Figure 1-1. Swimming in Lake Erie with Dad

Simple joys. Sun, water, family, and friends. Looking back many decades now, Lake Erie seems small compared to the oceans I would swim in later on. But then, it was not only huge; it was larger than life. Over the years, vacations would expand in scope,